California is being terribly misgoverned, as you would expect in any single-party state. In some sense California has become like a petro-state afflicted by the resource curse: the tech industry throws off so much cash that the state runs reasonably well, not because of the government but in spite of it. We can afford to waste government resources on frivolous nonsense.

And this isn't a partisan dig at Democrats. If a Republicans controlled everything then the situation would be just as bad but in different ways.